HELL

Emio Greco, Pieter C. Scholten as well as the troupe they founded a dozen years ago lay claim to the age of maturity. Located in Amsterdam, the Emio Greco | PC company tours more or less everywhere in the world. But the spirit of experimentation has not gone away and the institution has continued its international forum initiatives, the Accademia Mobile, proposing training sessions and teaching, inviting troupes, publishing a review, books, a DVD and programmatic texts. Emio Greco, an Italian dancer and choreographer, and Pieter C. Scholten, a Dutch choreographer, first proposed a trilogy, Bianco, Rosso, Extra Dry (1996-2000), Emio Greco's body being the central subject. Then the Double Points series (begun in 1998), short experimental pieces, was responsible for them being produced in many theatres and festivals in Europe. Lastly, Hell, a show premiered at the Festival Montpellier Danse in 2006, the result of four years of work, was the first of 4 sections inspired by The Divine Comedy by Dante. [purgatorio], which naturally follows, is divided into two parts, Popopera, which “is still a little bit of hell”, and In visione, which “is already a little bit of paradise”. Emio Greco and Pieter C. Scholten presented Double Points: Hell in the Sujets à Vif program at the Festival d'Avignon in 2005.

Hell begins in a strange disco atmosphere. Then, in the dark, the dancers return, between a dead tree and a gate of lights. As of this moment, they impose their strange presence-absence, in a chiaroscuro that is increasingly raw and blinding. What does one do in hell? One smokes, one tries to relearn – or unlearn – gestures, even the most ordinary ones. It is hard, it causes suffering, but at least one suffers here in a group. There seems to be an unknown choreography, and all these bodies, very dissimilar, are looking for it, imposing a dance that is as nervous as it is wild, but with its pauses and, sometimes, an almost morbid holding of the movement. The bodies finish stripping themselves while dancing naked in the white, or bluish, light and when two black shapes come to meet them, like the guardians of the underworld and the Styx ferrymen.

conception lumières, scénographie et son: Emio Greco, Pieter C. Scholten
danseurs: Ty Boomershine, Victor Callens, Vincent Colomes, Sawami Fukuoka, Emio Greco, Nicola Monaco, Marie Sinnaeve, Suzan Tunca
assistante des chorégraphes: Bertha Bermudez Pascual
lumières: Henk Danner
costumes: Clifford Portier
création sonore: Pieter C. Scholten
production: Gerco de Vroeg

production: Emio Greco | PC, coproduction Théâtre de la Ville-Paris, Festival Montpellier Danse 2006, Maison de la Culture d'Amiens –Centre de création et de production, Barbicanbite07 (Londres), Cankarjev Dom (Ljubliana,
Julidans 2006 (Amsterdam)
avec l'aide: de MAPP International Productions (New York) et ATER (Modène) avec le soutien: du Doris Duke Fund for Dance of the National Dance Project, un programme administré par le New England Foundation for the Arts avec le financement du National Endowment for the Arts, la Doris Duke Charitable
Foundation et la Ford Foundation
avec le soutien: de l'Ambassade du Royaume des Pays-Bas à Paris, du Fonds néerlandais des arts de la scène et du Theater Instituut Nederland